Shared standards aren't. Sanitizing yourself for others. Thank you! Dystopia is easy. Critical thinking is critical. PhD intelligence, not. Anger makes everything worse.
“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”
– Douglas Adams (Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
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1. “Expecting strangers to live by your standards guarantees frustration.”
No One Cares About Your Feelings – Darius Foroux – (blog)
Of course, we all believe we have shared standards, and perhaps at some high level we have something approaching it. But in day-to-day interactions, it’s often far from the truth. Sometimes the game is even rigged against it.
You are not crazy for expecting care and support from service providers. You are just expecting something the system is not designed to deliver.
Your goals might be care and support, but their values may be elsewhere, typically the next sale. This style of expectation misalignment is everywhere.
Coping is more personal. Rather than holding the expectation that everyone should believe as you do:
Treat people with respect when they do not deserve it. Keep your cool when you are provoked. None of this depends on how others act. Your standards are yours.
It’s a much less frustrating way to live.
Do this: Remember that “People always think they are doing the right thing”. That “the right thing” differs from what you might believe isn’t always the gross moral violation you’re tempted to think it is.
#feelings #standards #expectations
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2. “Strong reactions are often evidence that you’ve touched something real.”
Stop sanitizing yourself for other people’s comfort – Stepfanie Tyler – (Wild Bare Thoughts)
This is a difficult topic. Tyler addresses it primarily from a blogging / self-expression point of view, which I can understand. It’s also an issue I face regularly in the “day job” at Ask Leo!. I do “sanitize” my writing to a certain degree, attempting to respect the various perspectives of my audience. On the other hand, I work in technology, so you can understand that profanity is nearly a second language.
We’re sanitizing ourselves for other people’s comfort and it’s killing everything interesting about our work.
I was recently called out with an angry rant and unsubscribe (and promises to tell everyone else how horrible I am) because I used the words bullshit, and the more recently coined tech industry term “enshitification” in an article. Both were intentional, and both were part of the message I intended to convey. Someone took great offense.
Further sanitizing what I say might be one reaction. As would (over)reacting in anger, perhaps with even more offensive language. I chose neither. But it highlights the fact that “stop sanitizing yourself” is a laudable concept that doesn’t apply equally across all contexts.
Do this: Understand your contexts and be your appropriate self in each.
3. “Say thank you, and stop talking”
How to Say Thank You – Gary Buzzard – (Enjoy the Moment)
“Thank you” is often harder than it needs to be. Or it’s more overlooked than it should be.
Don’t denigrate yourself or minimize the compliment. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if you think it might be a back-handed compliment, do the right thing and just say thank you and stop talking.
A “Thank You” is a gift. Accept it as such. It’s such a simple thing; consider giving it more often.
Do this: Say thank you.
4. “Dystopia is basically entropy playing out to its natural conclusion.”
How to stay hopeful – Mike Monteiro – (Mike Monteiro’s Good News)
It’s a difficult concept, hope. The problem is that it takes work. The dystopia we fear, and perhaps even see all around us, is easy: do nothing and there it is. Throw in a political agenda or two, and it gets worse.
Dystopia is easy. You take what people are afraid of and tell them it’s right outside their door. The cure is to open the door and see the truth for yourself. What’s on the other side of the door is your neighbors, and some of them brought donuts.
The reality is much less frightening than we’re being led to believe. Yes, there’s bad shit out there. I get it. But please don’t let that stop you from seeing the good all around you. Still all around you.
Do this: Open the door and look.
5. “If humanity is facing a cliff, it won’t be a robot that pushes us over.”
The Erosion of Critical Thinking Will Doom Us Long Before AI – Joan Westenberg – (YouTube)
The message here is a simple one: all the angst surrounding AI is misplaced. Humanity’s already doing a fine job of doing itself in by losing its critical thinking skills.
Anything that requires real interpretive labor gets dismissed as elitist, boring, or inaccessible. There was a time when being educated meant being able to follow a long argument, challenge its structure, and locate it within a broader tradition of ideas. And today, that’s treated as arcane.
Critical thinking, deep thinking, questioning, and curiosity are falling out of favor. Conformity and tribalism are taking their place.
Do this: Think for yourself. Deeply. Please.
6. “It’s missing all those human things”
I Put ChatGPT 5’s ‘PhD Intelligence’ to the Test – Dr Vanessa Hill – (BrainCraft, YouTube)
ChatGPT 5 was released this week, and part of the announcement was its so-called “PhD level intelligence”. Dr Hill and four other PhDs decided to put it to the test, each in their respective areas of expertise.
The results were pretty much what we’ve come to expect.
It’s hand wavey. It does seem like it could give me a fair starting point for my own research, but I do not think that it could give me the context and the understanding that sitting living with a subject for years and years gives you.
It’s better than I expected, which is a little bit scary because I think it makes it very easy to trust it.
Closer, perhaps, but it’s certainly not “PhD level”, whatever that really means, anyway. It’s an interesting video to watch how they go about testing it, how deep it does and does not go, and where the answers often come from.
Do this: Use AI responsibly.
7. “Anger doesn’t make things better. It always makes things worse.”
You Need This Now More Than Ever – Ryan Holiday – (Meditations on Strategy and Life)
The world is full of anger, and it’s getting in the way of our ability to make rational, reasoned, responses and decisions.
If anger were something that made people better, do you think athletes would work so hard to get under the skin of their opponents? Do you think lawyers would try to attack and frustrate witnesses under cross-examination? Of course not. It is precisely because anger is blinding, because it makes us irrational, that one opponent uses it to undermine another.
It’s up to each of us to resist. Not the feelings, not the anger, but the knee-jerk irrational behavior that anger so often leads us to.
Do this: Pause. Take a breath. Make better choices.
Random links
- signal vs. noise: why people go out of their way to hate your work – Insights on AI usage and reactions to it.
- Is your brain really necessary for consciousness? – Perhaps not as much as we think?
- “I Forgot” Doesn’t Always Mean What You Think
What I’m reading now
- Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World – Anne-Laure Le Cunff
- The Inner Compass: Cultivating the Courage to Trust Yourself – Lawrence Yeo
- Creative Intellegence – Greg Storey
- Not Till We Are Lost – Dennis E. Taylor
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (Audio)
My Reading List – everything I’ve read since 2021.
My Sources Page – the common sources I scan/read regularly.
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